It would be easy but for the deep differences in policy, politics and personality.

The messy relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama began, appropriately enough, in a janitor’s office at Reagan National Airport in March 2007. U.S. and Israeli diplomats have been cleaning up ever since, as the two men have left a path littered with personal slights and policy differences.

But their confrontation over Netanyahu’s politically tinged speech to Congress Tuesday could end up being their messiest yet, affecting the outcome of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, the upcoming election in Israel and the future of the Middle East.

Bibi and Barack’s hastily arranged first meeting was, in fact, cordial and respectful, according to those who were there. Obama was returning to Washington from the primary campaign trail. Netanyahu was headed back to Israel where he was the opposition leader in the Knesset. Both knew they might soon be in power, and both recognized it would be work to reconcile their differences.

For starters, they came from very different backgrounds. As TIME wrote in 2010, Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was among the intellectual leaders of what is known as revisionist Zionism while his older brother became a national hero after leading, and dying in, the 1976 raid on Entebbe.

Obama for his part is the Christian son of an atheist father who had been raised a Muslim. The future president spent formative childhood years in a Jakarta house that had no refrigerator and no flushing toilet, and he still bears on his arm a scar from a playing-field cut perfunctorily stitched up in a Jakarta hospital.

But the real challenge the two have faced is their different policies in the Middle East. Obama came to office reaching out to Iran and pushing for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Netanyahu opposed warming ties with the militantly anti-Israel theocrats in Tehran and refused in early meetings with Obama publicly to embrace the possibility of a Palestinian state.

The two men have endeavored to put a positive face on their differences, and at times it wasn’t hard since they and their countries often had common interests. The two countries have collaborated on anti-Iran measures, and senior officials say the security relationship between the two countries has never been closer.

But as often as not, the combination of personal and policy differences, fueled by distrustful staffers, gave way to friction between the two men. There was the time Israel announced a massive expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joe Biden arrived there for talks—a traditional Israeli greeting for peace-process pushing U.S. diplomats that dates back at least to Secretary of State James Baker. Then there was “the Snub” —Obama’s 2010 decision to leave Netanyahu negotiating with aides in the West Wing while he went for dinner with his family.

The outcome of their latest confrontation remains to be seen. Netanyahu faces a tough election this month and the White House’s increasingly public criticism may well show their desire for a change in leadership. Netanyahu’s effort to encourage anti-Obama members of Congress to push new sanctions could help scupper the already tenuous U.S.-Iranian talks.

But even if nothing much comes of their latest confrontation, few imagine the men will ever be inclined to patch up their differences. As Netanyahu’s sometime political nemesis Avram Burg told TIME in 2010, the two men may simply be irreconcilable. “You cannot stitch together the world visions of Obama and Netanyahu,” Burg said. “This is a clash of the psychological infrastructure.”

Israel Demolishes East Jerusalem Home of Palestinian Behind Car Attack

Abdelrahman Al-Shaludi killed two in the October attack

Israeli security forces have destroyed the home of a Palestinian man who carried out a car attack in October that left two people dead and several injured, the military said Tuesday.

The demolition came soon after Israeli Primer Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to win a “battle for Jerusalem” after an attack on a synagogue left five dead. Tension over a disputed holy site and repercussions from the 50-day conflict in the Gaza Strip over the summer have contributed to growing unrest in Jerusalem in recent weeks.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a statement that the IDF and police forces had demolished the home Abdelrahman Al-Shaludi, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, who authorities say killed a baby girl and a young woman when he rammed his car into a light rail station on Oct. 22. Al-Shaludi was shot by officers at the scene and died of his wounds soon after.

Speaking on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu vowed to “settle the score with every terrorist” and said he had also “ordered the destruction of the homes of the Palestinians who carried out [Tuesday’s] massacre and to speed up the demolitions of those who carried out previous attacks,” BBC reports.

Israel halted its controversial policy of demolishing the homes of militants in 2005 after a review committee found it did not act as an effective deterrent, but Netanyahu revived the practice this year.

Dear Rabbi, Do you think there is any hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

“Any hope” is setting the bar quite low; we can all entertain some sliver of hope, so the answer to your question “is there ANY hope for peace” is “yes.” But I doubt peace will come the way our pundits and politicians imagine it.

They still talk about a two-state solution as if this is possible, but I have little hope that it is. Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a lose-lose scenario, and only some bold new initiative can change the status quo. Given the nature of Israeli politics, I’m not sure what that would be on the Israeli side. On the Palestinian side, however, the initiative would be Israeli citizenship.

If I were advising the Palestinians I would suggest they drop all efforts to secure a state alongside Israel, and demand full Israeli citizenship instead. I would suggest a media campaign with slogans like “Let My People In” and “Let us in or let us go.” If citizenship were granted, demographics would see Israel become a majority Palestinian state within a few generations. If it were not granted, the world would turn on Israel at it did on South Africa during the apartheid regime. The result in either case would be a democratic but no longer Jewish state. Democracy would, I imagine, lead to Islamic rule that would in time lead to Jews fearing for their lives in what was the Jewish state.

US Jews would then pressure the United States to rescue Jews from Palestine (I imagine the state would be renamed Palestine) and allow mass migration of former Israeli Jews into the United States. This may or may not work, but if it does American Jewry needs to prepare itself now to assimilate Israelis on a massive scale.

Of course I am probably wrong about all of this. Perhaps Israel will agree to withdraw to the Green Line, share Jerusalem as a capital, and repatriate Palestinian refugees; Palestine will eschew all militarization and violence, welcome the Jewish settlers in their midst with open arms as fully enfranchised citizens of Palestine, and become a secular, democratic and economic dynamo; and Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will become nonviolent social organizations helping the poorest of the poor to get into the middle class.

Israeli Ambassador: Here’s What “Proportionality” In War Really Means

Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science MonitorIsraeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer speaks to reporters at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor on July 22, 2014.

Israel's man in Washington makes the case that his country's military strikes in Gaza have been proportional to the threat

The Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, challenged critics of his country’s military operation in Gaza Tuesday morning, saying they don’t understand the legal definition of “proportionality” in wartime.

Speaking to reporters at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor, Dermer, a former top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argued that many are unfamiliar with the “rules of war” when they charge that his country has been disproportionate in its attacks on Gaza.

“We have to understand first of all what the rules of war are, because people don’t know them,” he said. “They throw around words like disproportionate without any understanding of what that actually means. A disproportionate response, from what I can gather in the interviews that I go to and the questions that I’m asked, disproportionate is believed to be what is the body count on both sides. So therefore if there’s 600 and something Palestinians who were killed and 25 Israelis, or a few days ago when there were 200 Palestinians and one Israeli, that is deemed to be a disproportionate response. That’s how most people deal with it.”

But Dermer said those assumptions were wrong. Dermer laid out the calculus that the Israeli government makes to justifying actions that may injure or kill civilians. He continued:

It’s important to understand what proportionality is in terms of the rules of war. There’s two basic principles that you have to remember. The first is distinction, you make a distinction between combatants and noncombatants. That’s the most important principle of the rules of war, that you have to make that distinction. And here Israel always makes that distinction. You have have Hamas that is deliberately targeting our civilians hoping to kill as many as possible. And you have Israel that does not deliberately target a single Palestinian civilian. We don’t deliberately target their civilians. For us, when a civilian is killed it’s an operational failure. And the more civilians who are killed, the greater the operational failure. And obviously a tragedy even of itself. And for Hamas, they celebrate—the greater the number of civilian casualties, for them, the greater the success of their operation.

And then you have the issue of proportionality.

Let’s say there’s a legitimate target because when a schoolhouse, hospital, mosque is turned into a military command center or a weapons depot, or a place where you fire rockets, it becomes by the rules of war a legitimate target. You cannot turn a hospital into a military command center. You cannot do that according to the rules of law. It’s a war crime for Hamas to do that. You cannot turn an UNRWA school into a weapons depot, that’s a war crime. You cannot use a Mosque as a missile manufacturing facility. It becomes a legitimate target. Then the question is okay, but can you target it in this specific instance.

There you get into the question of proportionality. Meaning, just because it’s a legitimate target doesn’t necessarily give you the right to hit it. Because for that, for you to be able to do that, you have to show that the gain you will get from the military action you take is worth the potential loss of lives that you might even foresee ahead of time. So I don’t want to get into theoretical examples but if you had you know 1 rocket that was sitting in a school somewhere and there are 50 kids in a classroom, then you cannot actually target to get to that rocket and kill those kids. That would be disproportionate because the gain that you have by hitting that one rocket would not justify killing 50 kids in the school. By the same token if you had 200 rockets in place and you had one civilian, by the rules of war, you could target that place even if you knew ahead of time that the civilian would be hurt.

Now there are all sorts of judgment calls that happen in between. Can you target that same target tomorrow or in an hour or in three hours? And Israel is always making these calculations.

To date, more than 500 people have died from the fighting, according to a count by the Washington Post Tuesday morning. That includes 25 Israeli soldiers, 2 Israeli civilians, 86 armed Palestinian militants and 406 Palestinian civilians. Of those Palestinian civilians, 129 were children.

Last week, Israel began a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory with the goal of destroying tunnels linking Egypt and Gaza and thus striking a “significant blow to Hamas’ terror infrastructure,” according to a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over 500 Palestinians and 20 Israelis have died in the recent fighting.

From Ceasefire to Ground Invasion: A Day In the Life of Israel and Gaza Residents

TIME asked residents of Gaza and Israel to chronicle their lives on the day Israel's forces started a ground offensive in the Palestinian territory.

+ READ ARTICLE

In the city of Herzliya, Israel, Guy Gutterman woke up to the sounds of sirens, ate a bowl of cereal and rode on an empty bus to the university where he teaches.

Meanwhile in Gaza, some residents felt safe enough to venture out into the streets for the first time in days, thanks to a 5-hour ceasefire brokered between Israel and Hamas.

On Thursday, four young residents of Gaza and Israel documented their daily lives from different sides of the border with videos and photos: from waking up with the news of a ceasefire, and going to sleep with the rumbling sounds of an Israeli offensive of the Palestinian territory.

Their first person narrative of the unfolding crisis reveals a rarely seen perspective from the ground.

Hamas Steps Up Rocket Fire, Israel Says Ready for Escalation

Mohammed Abed—AFP/Getty ImagesAbu Obeida, right, the official spokesperson of the Palestinian militant group Ezzedine al-Qassam brigade, the armed wing of Hamas, give a press conference on July 3, 2014 in Gaza City.

Hamas stepped up rocket fire at southern Israeli towns and Israel called up reserve troops on Monday in anticipation of a possible escalation of hostilities with the Islamist group that dominates the Gaza Strip.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group said it fired dozens of rockets within about an hour, after hundreds since mid-June. Israel said more than 40 rockets were launched as militants’ funerals were held in Gaza. Thirty struck inside Israel and the rest were shot down by rocket interceptors, the army said.

Israel Will Show the World It’s Willing to Hold Its Own to Account

Salih Zeki Fazlioglu—Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesClashes occurred between Israeli security forces and Palestinian youths during the funeral ceremony held for Muhammad Abu Kdear in Jerusalem on July 4, 2014.

Israel has not always been tough on prosecuting Jewish, non-lethal revenge attacks. But the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir should change that.

The vigilante revenge murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir will test the Israeli legal system to its core. The vast majority of Israelis, and all of its leaders, have condemned the murder in the strongest terms, but there are some Israelis—how many is unclear—who were so outraged at the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, that they were prepared to understand, if not justify, revenge.

A Facebook page was set up, after the murder of the Israeli youngsters but before the murder of the Palestinian youth, calling for revenge, but there was sharp disagreement within the page as to the nature of the revenge sought. The group’s “managers” explained their agenda: “Killing innocents? No. [T]he group’s purpose is to avenge the kidnapped teens’ blood. To catch the terrorists that abducted and killed them and to exact revenge.” But some on the page made the racist argument that “there is no such thing an innocent Arab.” The Israeli Army and Minister of Justice condemned the page and threatened to take actions against those who expressed racist views or called for revenge against innocent Palestinians.

The call for revenge was muted among Israelis by the horrible murder of Khdeir, but amplified among Palestinians. Riots have ensued both within Israel-Arab cities and on the West Bank.

Now, following the arrest of half-a-dozen Jewish Israelis, and the reported confession of three, the Khdeir case is in the hands of the Israeli legal system. I know this system well, having consulted on several high-profile Israeli prosecutions. I also know the Minister of Justice, the Attorney General and many of the judges. They all pride themselves on the fairness of Israeli justice. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to treat all murders—those committed by Israelis as well as those committed against Israelis—as equally reprehensible, demanding equal justice. “We do not differentiate between terrorists,” he declared.

In other contexts, the Israeli legal system has shown that it can be very tough on its own. A former president now sits in prison, having been convicted of rape and sexual harassment. A former Prime Minister has pledged to appeal his six-year prison sentence, having been convicted of corruption. Another former Prime Minister lost his job following an investigation by the Attorney General.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that when it came to investigating, prosecuting and punishing Jewish, non-lethal revenge attacks, primarily against Palestinian property—the so-called “price tag” vigilantism—the Israeli legal system was not always as tough as it should have been. But the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir may change that.

I believe the Israeli legal system will be fair, or perhaps even bend over backwards, when it comes to the brutal murderers of Khdeir. Criminal trials in Israel do not involve juries. Accused criminals are tried by professional judges, who are in general selected on a non-partisan basis. Verdicts and sentences are less likely to be influenced by popular opinion than in the United States, where judges are either elected or politically appointed, and where jurors are supposed to reflect the views of the people.

Even if some Israelis might have more sympathy for Jews who killed a Palestinian than for Palestinians who killed Jews, that sort of public bias will have little impact on the trial of those accused of killing Khdeir. The age of the defendants, however, might. There are reports that some may be minors, and Israeli law does take account of the age of accused criminals. But older vigilantes may well be involved as well, either in planning, inciting or protecting the actual killers. The investigation is ongoing and will not stop until everyone who has played a culpable role in the murder is apprehended and brought to justice.

The Israeli government, which rightfully complains that it is often subjected to a double standard of justice by international institutions such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, must show the world, and its own citizens, that it is capable of imposing the same standard of tough justice on Jews who murder Palestinians as it does on Palestinians who murder Jews. Justice demands no less. I predict that Israeli justice will pass the test.

Professor Alan Dershowitz’s latest book is Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law.

The murder of three teenagers should make the new Palestinian government a pariah, Israel's Intelligence Minister argues

A senior Israeli government official on Monday likened Hamas to the brutal fighters sowing chaos in Iraq and said there could be no dealing with a Palestinian government that includes the group, just hours after three Israeli teenagers believed to have been kidnapped by Hamas were found dead.

“This is just a reminder that Hamas is a cruel terrorist organization that sent 100 suicide bombers, terrorists, into Israel in the past, and has now executed three teenagers, three young boys,” said Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence.

“I don’t see much difference between these Hamas terrorists and the people from ISIS who executed the Iraqi soldiers,” Steinitz told a group of reporters in Washington, D.C., referring to the latter group’s mass execution of hundreds of captured Iraqi security forces during its mid-June blitz into northern Iraq.

The three boys were abducted while hitchhiking on June 12. Their fate consumed Israel as a massive hunt was conducted, but their bodies were discovered in an open field near Hebron Monday.

Steinitz said that the killings reinforce Israel’s position that it could not negotiate with a Palestinian unity government combining the Palestinian Authority, which holds power in the occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which has ruled over Gaza since 2007. Despite Israeli protests, the Obama Administration continues to work with and fund the Palestinian government, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, on the grounds that it does not include any cabinet ministers affiliated with Hamas.

U.S. and Israeli officials say Abbas’ June 1 deal forging a unity coalition between the two long-divided Palestinian factions was the final blow to an already faltering Middle East peace process. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Palestinian deal, insisting that Israel refuses to negotiate with “terrorists.”

Though both ISIS and Hamas are Sunni radical groups, they have very different identities and agendas and ISIS employs violence on a much larger scale. But Steinitz hopes that the killing of the teenagers will “remind the world” of Hamas’ true nature, and insisted Abbas “cannot proceed with this unity government with this terrorist organization.”

U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed that Hamas is behind the abductions and killings. On Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki wouldn’t say whether that conclusion would lead the Obama Administration to sever ties with the Palestinian government.

Steinitz also argued that Abbas himself bears responsibility for the killings, noting that the abductions took place near that Palestinian Authority–controlled town of Hebron. “Those Hamas terrorists came from Hebron and are under total control of the Palestinian Authority,” Steinitz said.

Steinitz is in Washington as part of an Israeli delegation of nine, including officials from the Mossad, Israel’s national security council and its atomic energy agency. They met Monday with senior Obama officials who are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, including the State Department’s Iran lead negotiator, Wendy Sherman, and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

The meeting was arranged on short notice, a day before the U.S. delegation leaves for a final round of talks with Iran in Vienna, Steinitz said. He reiterated Israel’s position that Iran should not be allowed to retain domestic uranium-enrichment capability or to operate a “heavy water” nuclear reactor whose fuel can be fashioned into bombs. He cited the removal of chemical weapons from Syria as a model of deal that involves total dismantlement of a weapons capability.

The current interim nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S. expires on July 20. Few observers expect the two sides to reach a comprehensive agreement by then; many expect an extension that could range from a few weeks to several more months, although even an extension will be politically complex proposition for both sides. U.S. officials have given no indication that Iran might be willing to surrender its domestic nuclear program entirely as Israel wants.

Despite all the chaos in the region, including in Iraq and Syria, he said, “we regard the Iranian nuclear issue as the most important in the Middle East — and the world.”

Steinitz was also skeptical about Iran’s potential to play a positive role in stabilizing Iraq. “It doesn’t seem to me that Iran is eager to cooperate with the U.S. or the West as regards Iraq, because Iran’s goals are different,” he said.

After 18 days of searching, Israeli soldiers find the remains of the three kidnapped youths, not far from where they were last seen

The bodies of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped while hitchhiking this month were found on Monday afternoon in a field a few miles south of where they were last seen, the Israeli military said.

The discovery brought to a tragic close the intense search and nationwide vigil for Eyal Yifrach, 19; Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaer, both 16, all students at Jewish religious schools located on the occupied West Bank. It also shifted to the foreground the question of how Israel will respond to the deaths, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames on Hamas, the militant Islamist group. After news that the bodies had been found in an open field north of Hebron, Netanyahu summoned senior ministers to an emergency meeting of the so-called security cabinet.

Netanyahu made some brief remarks at the beginning of the meeting. “They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by animals,” he said, according to Haaretz. “In the name of the whole of Israel, I ask to tell the dear families — to the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers and the grandfathers, the brothers and sisters — our hearts are bleeding, the whole nation is crying with them. We will bring the boys to be buried according to Jewish rites.”

“Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,” the Prime Minister added.

Israel already has struck hard at Hamas, tripling the number of troops on the West Bank in what was the largest military operation in the area in a dozen years. Officials said they wanted to wound Hamas as an organization — by arresting scores of its activists and shuttering its social-service outlets on the West Bank, while pounding militant targets in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has governed since 2007. In recent days, rockets from the Gaza Strip have been flying toward Israel.

Netanyahu made clear he also wanted to coerce the more moderate Fatah party to dissolve a governing partnership that had been put in place only two weeks earlier, in the form of a cabinet of technocrats at the Palestinian Authority (PA). But the effort to influence Palestinian politics was greeted skeptically on the West Bank, where the Israeli military operation was seen more as a bludgeon than an effort to recover the missing teens. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, was criticized for condemning the kidnapping and directing Palestinian security services to assist in the search.

In Israeli security circles, the investigation turned grim early. The discovery of a burned sedan outside Hebron the morning after the teens went missing was received with foreboding: fires can erase evidence, and Hebron would be the likeliest direction abductors would head. Other directions would take them closer to concentrations of Israeli security, and the city is both the largest on the West Bank, and a stronghold of Hamas. Forensic examination of the vehicle produced spent bullets and traces of blood. The amount could not be detected, however, nor the type, let alone DNA. Absent the presence of bodies, the news was initially withheld from the families. But investigators hypothesized that at least one of the youths had been killed within minutes inside the car, and likely all three.

Authorities also zeroed in on suspects soon after the abduction — two young Palestinians who were known to be active in Hamas, and had disappeared the night the teens went missing. Marwan Quasma, 29, and Amar Abu Eisha, 32, are thought to be in hiding separately. Quasma is from a notoriously militant Hebron clan that, in the past, has reportedly been known to operate beyond the control of Hamas leaders.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement on Monday extending his condolences to the three teenagers’ families. “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth,” he said. “I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation. As the Israeli people deal with this tragedy, they have the full support and friendship of the United States.”